Easy as 1-2-3-4: a Rye Berliner Weiss
Last summer I prepared a fantastic sour-mashed Berliner Weiss. It was so good that I swore I’d brew at least 2 batches of it this summer, so its time to get going. But with a lot of changes. The last Berliner Weiss was as basic as you can get – 1:1 barley:wheat, sour mashed, and fermented with 1056. This year that is all going to change.
A big part of this change was motivated by a Berliner Weiss brewed by Justin, a fellow brewer in the London Homebrewers Guild. He used a bit of rye in his Berliner Weiss, and it worked incredibly well; the dry/crisp character of the rye fit in perfectly well with the sourness & dryness of the Berliner Weiss. The second big change I am making is the use of multiple yeast/bacterial cultures; instead of getting my lacto from a handful of uncrushed malt, I’m using an innoculum of lacto from my yeast bank (#91, Lactobacillus buchneri). I am doing this in the hope of avoiding some of the harsher bacterial tones I got last summer (likely from enterobacteria) – they eventually faded, but were unpleasant while they persisted. After boiling, I will be fermenting with a mix of Saccharomyces and Brettanomyces (yeast bank #111, 133 & 134) ; all three strains having been isolated from a commercial Berliner Weiss.
This unusual approach is also meant to deal with another issue – between starting the yeast cultures and the planned brew day – Saturday – SWIMBO and I decided to go camping. I’m hoping that the pitching of ~50ml of active lacto culture Tuesday night will sour things enough to finish the brew on Thursday…I’m hoping it will work, but either way this is the plan.
Why 1-2-3-4 you ask? Its easy – 1:2:3 is the rye:wheat:pilsner malt ratio of the beer, and it took 4 microorganisms to ferment it out!
Recipe & Brewing Notes Below the Fold…
Sour Mashing
The advantage to a sour mash over a conventional sour ferment are two-fold; firstly, the degree of souring is controllable and can be dialed-in to give exactly the degree of sourness desired. Secondly, it is faster; a sour-mashed Berliner Weiss can be in a keg in 10 days; a sour-fermented Berliner Weiss usually takes a month or more.
This, of course, comes with a cost. While faster and more controlled, the sourness of a sour mash is almost entirely lactic acid, as such the resulting beer will be less complex than a beer soured during the ferment. Sour-ferments can produce varying amounts of acetic and lactic acid, other rarer acids and acid-esters. In addition, there is the risk of getting a hefty growth of a heterofermentative lacto that produces a lot of beuteric acid – producing an unpleasant, buttery beer.
The Recipe
| Easy as 1-2-3: Rye Berliner Weiss |
| Berliner Weiss |
| Type: All Grain | Date: 22 Apr 2014 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Batch Size (fermenter): 23.00 l | Boil Size: 27.89 l | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Boil Time: 15 min | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Ingredients | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Beer Profile | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Est OG: 1.032 SG | Measured Original Gravity: 1.030 SG | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Est Alcohol by Vol: 3.5 % | Bitterness: 7.1 IBUs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Est Color: 2.6 SRM | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mash Profile | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Mash Name: Single Infusion, Light Body, Batch Sparge | Total Grain Weight: 3.18 kg | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sparge Water: 24.30 l | Grain Temperature: 22.2 C | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sparge Temperature: 75.6 C | Tun Temperature: 22.2 C | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Adjust Temp for Equipment: TRUE | Mash PH: 5.20 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Sparge Step: Batch sparge with 24L at 75.6 C water | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mash Notes: A portion of the sparge water should be added, boiling, to raise mash temp to sparge temp before starting sparge. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Carbonation and Storage | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Carbonation Type: Keg | Volumes of CO2: 2.3 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Notes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1) Sour mash 3-4 days using cultured Lactobacillus (#91) 2) Primary ferment with mix of Berlinerweiss yeast (#111) and Brett (#108)-table sugar is optional; used to dry out beer | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Created with BeerSmith | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brewing Notes
- The sour mash appears to have worked well – at the 24 hour mark there was a notable lactic aroma and modest lactic character; the top of the wort was covered in a film similar to what lacto creates in the fermenter. I added ~1.5L of boiling water to raise the temperature above 37C. By brew day (~46 hours post-lacto addition) the lactic character was much stronger; roughly where my memory placed the acidity of the last batch. Interestingly, the aroma and flavour was much cleaner than the classical sour-mash started with a handful of grain.
- Forgot to add rice hulls. Never forget rice hulls with a brew like this.
- Ended up with lightly more volume at a slightly lower gravity than expected
I'm excited to see how this turns out – I haven't actually had a chance to try those Berliner bretts out yet. The beer they're from had a powerful lemony funk that should work nicely with the rye and wheat.